


From the Mystical, Took Back Our Yesterday

by stardustedknuckles



Series: Tumblr Prompt Flash Fics [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, But not enough for a character tag, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Flash Fic, Mention of Zuala, Prompt Fill, Psychic Violence, fear visions, nothing too graphic just unsettling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28742019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: Tumblr prompt: "like scarlet witches moment where she shows the avengers the future/fate/fear?, a moment like that but a spooky shopkeep on the side of the road? some angsty Beauyasha <3"What it says on the tin, mostly.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Series: Tumblr Prompt Flash Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2094657
Comments: 5
Kudos: 105





	From the Mystical, Took Back Our Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> I got this prompt like a week ago (sorry anon, and sorrier to the couple I haven't and might not be able to do) and it kept coming back and coming back...I had to ask my sister about Scarlet Witch bc most of my MCU knowledge past Age of Ultron is unwilling. Turns out I saw her use her power and forgot. Whoops! Anyway have a fear vision featuring Beau making a WIS save and Yasha getting psychically cold cocked in a marketplace. Rude.

When someone tried to kick Beau's ass, as a rule, she liked to know why.

This was news to her, she realized dimly, mostly because she wasn't certain she'd ever been so thoroughly surprised by an attack. There was a weird sort of disconnect in her mind, a moment she felt must be missing between staring at a glass necklace on display and getting slammed in the face by the nervous shopkeeer.

Her staff made a satisfying sort of crack when she snapped it against the ankle of the street vendor in question as he tried to run past, and only when he was down did she wipe the blood off her lip and consider it for a moment.

"I was perfectly fucking civil, when did a hammer need to be involved?" She jabbed the guy on the ground in the back of the neck to shut him up and looked to Yasha. "You saw that right?" She peered closer. “Yasha?” A trickle of ice wound its way down Beau’s spine as she got a good look at her.

Yasha was standing frozen, eyes staring into space and a sick look of horror on her face - the kind of look that came from an iron fist clenched around your soul, the kind that didn't look like much at all if you didn't know.

Beau knew.

"Yasha." Beau moved in front of her and gripped her forearms. Yasha didn't respond.

Around them, people were beginning to gather, murmuring and looking from Beau’s bloody nose and her staff to the street vendor lying unconscious on the sun-splashed stones.

She ignored them all and reached up to touch Yasha's face carefully. "Yasha, what did he do? Hey." Her cheek was clammy and cool under Beau's hand - this Yasha was miles away from the shy excitement that had been thrumming through them both at their foray into the colorful festival, bore no resemblance to the spark in her eye that had appeared at the sight of the glass booth twinkling in the afternoon light.

"Fuck," Beau breathed. A distant part of her wanted to wheel and kick the vendor again, but the impulse was overpowered by her need to make sure whatever was affecting Yasha stopped immediately. "Okay," said Beau. She shook out her hands like she was about to square up for a fight and rolled her shoulders. "I don't know what the fuck that guy did and I was saving this for tonight, but I need you back here."

No change in her face. Behind them, Beau heard a commotion stirring and the unmistakable shrill snarl of Veth on a mission. That was good. Their friends would keep the people away.

It also meant she and Yasha were gonna catch hell for teasing later, but fuck it.

Beau reached up and cupped Yasha's face with both hands. "I'm gonna feel like an asshole if this doesn't work," she said, and then she kissed her.

* * *

Yasha vaguely understood that something was off, but the memory of _what_ felt slippery. She'd been somewhere…else. She had the impression of color, the lingering smell of a spice she'd never tasted. She frowned, trying to concentrate.

"And what are you thinking about, Foxbane?"

The impressions popped like a soap bubble and Yasha shook her head quickly to turn to her wife. Zuala was leaned up against her shoulder, wrapped in Yasha's cloak and eyes almost without iris in the light of the fire they were sat next to. Her smile was soft and teasing, the sort Yasha could never resist - well, probably. She hadn't tried.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to Zuala's cold forehead. "Nothing, just had a weird thought for a moment." She nudged her with her shoulder playfully. "And that's Mrs. Foxbane to you now."

Zuala laughed, and if there were an incorrect number of teeth in her smile or a smell of grave dirt that rose with the sound, it was _fine_. Everything was as it should be.

The Xhorhassian night sprawled beyond the light of their small fire, secluded as they were in a part of the wilds Yasha herself had scouted days ago and found without trace of person or beast. The stars were knives punched through the smothering blanket of sky, shadows of stunted trees reaching to claw it down with gnarled fingers.

"They're coming again," Zuala said quietly. There was no trace of alarm, no warning to her voice, but Yasha heard blood in her throat, coating her words. "You can't stop them." Zuala's voice was a whisper now, and Yasha was terrified to look down. "It's alright, my love, but you have to wake up."

Dry gorse cracking underfoot nearby, and Yasha whirled with her heart in her throat as the firelight caught the edge of a glaive - then a sword, several spears, hands holding them under faces that shifted and blended one to the next of people she should know but refused to be familiar.

There was no sound when Zuala was pulled from her side, and they were closer now. Someone stamped out the fire and embers rolled across the dirt. Everything was shadows, now - Yasha's eyes refused to pull in the light that would make sense of the noises she was now hearing nearby. Everything was happening outside of time, like Yasha wasn’t a part of things at all but a drunk observer.

"This isn't real," Zuala said from the ground. Her voice was strong but strange and her silhouette was smaller, compact somehow and missing the shape of her furs. Rough hands gripped Yasha's biceps, pulled her arms behind her, held her head.

"No," she whispered. "No!"

Starlight glinting from a raised blade and Beau's voice - Beau, she knew Beau, why was she here? - breaking through the falling sense of déjà vu to stare her down, blue eyes bright and furious. "Wake up, Yasha!"

The sword fell. Yasha screamed.

But no sound came out - light and color and the smells of a hundred spices and foods washed over her as her body collapsed, heaving for air while her mind skipped and stuttered over itself to make sense of what was happening.

Beau. Zuala had been there, but she hadn't been real. She knew that now. But Beau's voice had been, and Yasha looked around frantically at the disparate and unfamiliar people and items around her -

"Yasha." Beau's voice again, but quiet. Soft. Yasha blinked and found herself looking straight into the face of Beau herself, knelt over her and stroking her hair. "Can you hear me?"

Yasha didn't trust her voice. She reached for Beau with desperate, shaking fingers and pulled her down and against her chest, burying her face in Beau's neck and breathing in the warmth of her - the life, the sweat and sunlight and salt of her skin. Salt. They had been in the ocean. They were in Nicodranas. The festival.

The shopkeeper.

The fucking shopkeeper.

"Fuck." Yasha's voice cracked hard enough to obscure most of the word - it came out more of a whimper that she couldn't even find it within herself to be ashamed of.

Beau was hugging her back now, solid and strong and _here_. "It's okay," she said. She sounded like maybe she wasn't breathing very well and trying to hide it for Yasha's benefit. "Someone fucked with your brain. Whatever it was is over."

She definitely sounded winded. Yasha checked her arms, found them locked painfully tight even for her and relaxed them with effort. She didn't want to let go, but it meant that Beau could pull back now and Yasha could see her, whole and alive and - "I s-saw Zuala," she said.

Beau's face turned from soft reassurance to confusion. "You wh -" Her eyes widened. "That motherfucker." She turned over her shoulder to the figure lying facedown on the street, Veth standing on his back and tying his wrists while Jester sat on his legs and Fjord assured passerby that there was nothing to worry about.

Yasha still had Beau's forearm in her hand and she squeezed it wordlessly. The cold rage in Beau's face hadn't quite faded by the time she turned back to Yasha, and she felt something flare once, distant, from beneath the ruin that had been made of her emotions. Gratitude, maybe, or grief-tempered affection.

"I'm so sorry," Beau said softly. She was visibly pulling herself together for Yasha - however she looked, it must be bad. "It wasn't real. He's on the run or something, I heard Caleb say it. He recognized us, panicked…are you okay?"

The experience was fading like a nightmare, leaving Yasha shaken and closer to tears than she'd been in a long time. She felt made of glass and loose all at once, like the world might shatter if she moved too quickly, but she attempted a shaky nod. "I knew," she managed. "While it was happening, it was - everything was wrong but I didn't care." As she spoke, Yasha realized her lips felt strange. There was a pressure to them, a kind of tingling that stirred in her the dimmest recollection of Beau pressed against her just before she collapsed.

She touched her mouth with her fingers and looked up at Beau questioningly. "Did you…?"

"Yeah." Beau's answer was confident but her eyes searched Yasha's face. "I'm sorry if it was too soon, or out of turn, or -"

She'd missed their first kiss and the second was a clumsy, desperate grab for the reassurance of Beau's presence here with her. Neither were how Yasha would have liked them, but this one pulsed through her and blew the remnants of fear collected like dust off of the inside of her mind, and that was everything right now. "I saw them kill you," she was able to say when they pulled apart. It had been Beau's turn to touch her lips in wonder, but now her eyes flicked to Yasha's immediately and her fingers made a fist.

"They didn't," she said shortly. She didn't ask who. She wasn't in the habit of prying, and Yasha loved her for it. Yasha startled at Beau's thumb under her eye and realized a tear had made its way out after all. 

"I'm here," Beau said steadily. "And I owe a wizard the ass kicking of his life." She managed to pull a smile from somewhere secret, maybe a place just for Yasha. "Fucker ruined all my plans for a nice bottle of wine and a quiet hill by the ocean before I kissed you."

Yasha sputtered a hiccup of a laugh and took a deep and shaky breath. "That still sounds good," she said. "I just need a minute."

"Yeah of course," Beau said. She looked over her shoulder again. "They can take care of that shit, come on." She started to pull them both to their feet and Yasha did her best to keep Beau from taking too much of her weight. "Let's go sit off to the side and you can have some of my drink."

Yasha nodded shakily. "Yeah, okay." She looked down at Beau, taking in every inch of her body and the way it looked and moved like a body should. 

The scar that was her grief for Zuala had been sliced, but it was an old wound and it didn't have much left in the way of nerves to cut inside of her. Yasha carried her memory like a precious thing - seeing her again had not been the focus of whatever had hit her.

Beau looked up from under the arm Yasha had slung over her shoulder to check on her. "You good?"

Yasha swallowed, moisture slowly returning to her mouth. "Yeah,” she said. "Yeah. Let's sit." 

Whatever had happened, Beau had been placed at the center of it and Beau was who was here now. The Zuala conjured in her mind had tried to warn her, to send her back. Not for the first time, Yasha felt a pang at the thought of the two of them ever meeting - not of guilt, as it had been before, but of a kind of loss at the thought that they would have gotten along like a house on fire.

Maybe she’d tell say that out loud, one day. But for now, she let Beau help her down to sit with her back against a broad tree trunk, and then Yasha held her arm open in invitation and request.

Beau glanced from Yasha's outstretched hand to her face and smiled, and then she folded her legs under her and let Yasha pull her in.


End file.
